Martin Schram: Putin gets lucky with his dirty workVentura County Star
In August, former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, an independent professional who served Republican and Democratic presidents, took the unusual position of publicly endorsing Clinton for president. Morell deplored that Trump was ignoring ...and more »

While it’s hardly the election to get the most attention this year, the United Nations General Assembly has confirmed a nominee with a background in socialist politics and refugee matters to be the organization’s new secretary-general.
The 193-member United Nations General Assembly approved Antonio Guterres, a socialist whom President Barack Obama called a man of “character, vision, and skills” in a statement five days before speaking with him on the phone.
Guterres replaces U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who served two five-year terms and is stepping down from the position on December 31.

”The international community has never relied more on the United Nations than it does today,” @Potus says.

Obama said in his statement that the new secretary-general would be instrumental in dealing with “unprecedented challenges” facing the world, including the surge of millions of displaced peoples and climate change.
In the midst of the Syrian civil war, the refugee crisis has become front and center for most Western countries, including the United States. Guterres, 67, was prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, as head of the country’s Socialist Party. He also was the head of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees from 2005 through 2015. Both roles involved some controversy.
When addressing the U.N. General Assembly after his victory, Guterres talked about bringing relief to refugees and promoting gender equality as key priorities, but also said he would take a limited approach to his new office.
“I believe this process means that the true winner today is the credibility of the U.N. And it also made very clear to me that, as secretary-general, having been chosen by all member states, I must be at the service of them all equally and with no agenda but the one enshrined in the U.N. Charter,” Guterres said.
The bigger question might be whether the role matters, said Fred Fleitz, a former U.N. analyst for the CIA and the chief of staff for former U.N. ambassador John Bolton.
“The U.N. is more and more a nonentity,” Fleitz told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “It’s used to justify actions, but because of the vetoes on the Security Council, there is no way to act on Syria or North Korea. I don’t know if this election matters.”
Still, Fleitz said he believes the socialist background of the new secretary-general is relevant.
“It should be concerning to have someone with that perspective for thinking along the lines of one-world government at a time when the world is moving away from that, if you look at the European Union,” Fleitz said.
In addition to leading the Socialist Party in Portugal, Guterres presided over Socialist International, a global group of 153 socialists, social democratic, and labor party leaders, from 1999 to 2005.
Guterres weathered controversy in both of his past positions, said Brett Schaefer, a senior fellow in international and regulatory affairs at The Heritage Foundation.
Guterres resigned as prime minister of Portugal when the Socialist Party took heavy losses in the 2001 local elections following an economic downturn. At the U.N., a 2010 Independent Board of Auditors cited the United Nation’s refugee agency for weak financial management and oversight.
Still, Guterres was clearly the best out of a crowded field of candidates for the job, Schaefer said. Schaefer said he thinks the new U.N. chief’s socialist affiliations say something about him.
“It provides some insight into his political leanings and shows that he advocates an economy where the state is more interventionist in markets and over the lives of individuals,” Schaefer told The Daily Signal.
Schaefer anticipates that Guterres will be a strong spokesman on the refugee front, possibly using his platform to call for more Western countries to increase the number of refugees they take in.
“I’m sure he will advocate for the part of the U.N. system he knows the best, given the significant rise in refugees we’ve seen in recent years, he will do what he can to address that problem,” Schaefer said.
Ultimately, Guterres’ ability to push an agenda will be limited, since the U.N. Security Council has the ultimate authority to make major decisions, Schaefer said. That’s why Schaefer contends it would be better to focus on weeding out waste and corruption in the organization.
Guterres, a practicing Catholic, is a trained engineer and was a professor before going into politics in 1974. Guterres will take his post in January, just weeks before the inauguration of a new U.S. president.
The post Socialist, Refugee Advocate to Run UN for Next Five Years appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Russia perturbed by US troops in NorwayThe Independent
The tentative discussions take place against a backdrop of increasing tensions between Russia and the West, notably over Ukraine and the conflict in Syria. Also on 10 October, the Norwegian newspaper Adresseavisen said the Pentagon wanted to station ...and more »

Thousands of Americans suffered from serious internet difficulties on more than a dozen major sites on Friday as a result of a massive cyber-attack. This attack from unknown sources comes one week after US Vice President Joe Biden threatened Russia with a cyber-attack in retaliation for their alleged hacking of the Democratic Party.
According to user reports and the web-tracking site <a href="http://downdetector.com" rel="nofollow">downdetector.com</a>, the affectedsites included The New York Times, CNN, Disqus, some Amazon sites, Yelp, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, GitHub, Etsy, Tumblr, Spotify, PayPal, Verizon, Comcast, EA, the Playstation network, and others.
The cyber attack targeted the domain-name system, or DNS, the technical network that redirects users from user-friendly, human understandable website addresses to actual web servers. The attack took the form of a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against Dynamic Network Services Inc. (Dyn), one of the major companies that provides access to DNS. Security researcher Brian Krebs explained in a blog post on Friday that a DDoS attack occurs when “the attacker uses a large number of hacked or ill-configured systems to flood a target site with so much junk traffic that it can no longer serve legitimate visitors.”
“We have been aggressively mitigating the DDoS attack against our infrastructure,” Scott Hilton, a vice president at Dyn said in a statement provided by a spokesman Friday morning. It took Dyn 11 hours to restore service after three separate attacks.
The cyber-attack used Mirai, a readily available program released a month ago that is relatively easy to use, allowing even unskilled hackers to launch DDoS attacks. The software uses malware from phishing emails to infect a computer or home network, spreading to everything on that local network, taking over any connected device, whether it is a computer, tablet, cellular phone, webcams and digital video recorders, security cameras, or any gadget that is on the network. These devices are used to create a robot network, to send the millions of messages to attack other computer systems.
Dyn Chief Strategy Officer Kyle York explained that Friday’s attack came from“tens of millions” of addresses on machines that had been infected with the malicious code.
“It’s a very smart attack,” York said. “Literally, picture tens of millions of things attacking a single data center.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the Department of Homeland Security was “monitoring the situation” but that “at this point I don’t have any information about who may be responsible for this malicious activity.”
The source of the attack is still unknown and no one has claimed responsibility, though cyber-attacks have become a potential battleground between Russian and America recently.
Last week,NBC News quoted U.S. intelligence officials as saying that the Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election. Also, one week before Friday’s cyber attack, Vice President Joe Biden threatened Russia with a “clandestine” cyber-attack during an interview with Meet the Press.

I'd totally hack Trump... if he lost a little weight

Donald Trump is now an outspoken WikiLeaks fan. This professionally combines the pussy-grabber with a man in exile because he's been accused of rape; an exile whose ambassador has been accused of multiple sexual assaults ... creating a he-man-woman-hater's club trifecta for the ages.
No one's hacked Trump or the RNC and spilled the beans -- yet, anyway. Which is weird considering how crappy bits and pieces of Trump's security have been shown to be, and how abysmal government organizations are proving to be at cyber defense.
As for Trump, he left his own site wide open, and his email servers are riddled with security holes. Maybe he's been lucky, or someone on his team hired some good hackers to protect him.
But based on the cyberlaw of cyberaverages, I think one of two things are most likely: Either he's been hacked and the crew is sitting on docs, or hacking him and/or the RNC requires nation-state level resources... and no nation is motivated to hack him. Maybe because to other nations he's only a four. Alright, maybe a five if he had some State Department briefings on a server somewhere... and lost a little weight.
The people who like to equate zero days to missiles and suggestions of 'stockpiles of cyber bombs' must be pretty psyched we're on the cusp of a cyberwar. And we are. Vice President Joe Biden added his voice to the cyber-saber-rattling when he told press "We're sending a message. We have the capacity to do it." Biden singled out Putin when he added, "He'll know it. And it will be at the time of our choosing. And under the circumstances that have the greatest impact."

Cyber World War One?

So I guess we're going to have that "Cyber Pearl Harbor" that septuagenarian politicians have been using as a boogeyman for the past ten years, after all. But what does that even mean?
A number of pundits think cyberwar against Russia will come in the form of embarrassing Putin, his government and ruling class. Not to mention the Russian hackers who work for the government. Britain's doing cyberwartoo, but seems to be keeping far more quiet about it than we are. Law-and-war analysis blog Lawfare posits that there's nothing new to be hacked. Because of this, they conclude, all cyberwar can do is reveal information the US has already purloined in hacks our spies have done over time.
Talk about zero points for creativity! The law and war pundits might not be looking at the world around us, but most of us who are worried about what cyberwar might mean certainly are -- and we're more than a little worried about acts of war and the cybers. I mean, not only do we all watch films and TV, we're painfully aware that major breaches are commonplace, that industrial control systems are not in the best of shape, and that the internet of things is definitely not our passive and always-helpful friend.
Perhaps we'll find out that DDoS is the new D-Day. I don't know about you, and I'm not friends with any anti-hacking hippies, but I'd really rather that my country not have to ask Russia, "shall we play a game?"
I think that to most people, this kind of war is going to be even harder to conceive of than any in history: The American public will literally not understand what it looks like. As a result it will feel far less real, there will be misinterpretation a go-go, and public accountability has left the building. There will be no draft, no foxholes and no bombs, no shrapnel, no Purple Hearts, no boots on the ground, and to the outside observer, no noise, no honor, and no cost.
There won't be any cyberwar protests, anti-cyberwar songs or movements, or hippies hoping we'll just give cyber peace a chance. Nor will there be any ticker-tape parades for triumphant returning heroes of the cyberwar. Hell, there won't even be a clear victor.Images: AP Photo/Evan Vucci (Trump); AP Photo/Markus Schreiber (Putin)

With just two weeks until Election Day, one political figure has already achieved the sort of stunning American political success famous predecessors never dreamed would be possible.
Sadly, it is Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin clearly had as his fondest goal somehow disrupting the world’s most famous democracy — and perhaps even causing some Americans to lose faith in their cherished democratic process. But surely even Putin never thought he would lucky enough to have his dirty work being done — and his favorite message being spread — by the Ultimate American Insider.
Here is how Putin apparently got so lucky. It was a three-stage effort:
1. The skill of Russian cyberagents: They used cyber tech as a superweapon that Joe Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev never fantasized might exist. U.S. intelligence officials reportedly now believe cyber operatives from Russia’s government broke into and burglarized emails from the computer files of the Democratic Party and, probably, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s advisers. Russia’s cyber burglars escaped with their email loot with a virtual ease that eluded Richard Nixon’s low-tech burglars who got caught red-handed late at night inside the 1972 Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office building.
2. The leaky resources of WikiLeaks: They leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee and, apparently, Clinton’s campaign advisers to the news media. Soon the American public was reading the sort of snarky, sometimes stupid comments that we know political operatives have always made to each other — about political luminaries they’ve just been flattering in public. In the hullabaloo that followed, the Democratic National Committee’s chairwoman lost her job, her replacement was later embarrassed, and so was Clinton’s top campaign adviser. And former Secretary of State Clinton’s poor, self-indulgent email-system decision-making was spotlighted yet again.
3. The geopolitical cluelessness of Putin’s Ultimate American Insider: Yup, Donald Trump. The Republican presidential standard-bearer was exposed in ways that should have been disqualifying to all in the party that always took the toughest line against the Kremlin. Instead, the GOP candidate was revealed as a man Putin easily manipulated into becoming his messenger and megaphone. At his rallies, Trump repeatedly claimed, without any evidence, that America’s 2016 election is “rigged” and Americans shouldn’t trust the election results. Unless, by a miracle not foreshadowed by the polls, Trump wins.
The most stunningly newsworthy moment in Wednesday night’s third and final campaign debate occurred when Trump, responding to a question from moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News, refused to commit himself to accept and honor the results of the election. He said only that he’d look at the results and then decide. “That’s horrifying,” said Clinton, explaining that peaceful transfer of power is the bedrock of America’s democracy.
Trump also challenged Clinton’s criticism that he has been praising Putin while Russia has engaged in cyber-espionage to undermine the U.S. elections. Trump insisted she did not know whether Russia or China or anyone else was behind the email hacking. Clinton replied that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded Russia had perpetrated the espionage.
He has become Putin’s most staunch defender in the entire Western political world. Trump insisted Putin didn’t invade Ukraine (after Putin invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and ripped it away) or arm Ukraine rebels elsewhere. And he welcomed Russia’s military intervention to save Syria’s murderous dictatorship.
Trump’s infatuation with Russia’s strongman really goes back to the early days of his campaign. Putin offered a few words of praise for the maligned multibillionaire who had shown an interest in doing business in Russia. Trump insists Putin called him “brilliant” and a “genius.”
Actually, Putin didn’t say that. As PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning purveyors of truth in the murky world of politics, noted: Putin used the Russian word “yarkii,” which means “bright” or “brilliant” — as a synonym for “vivid” as it pertains to being colorful.
In August, former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, an independent professional who served Republican and Democratic presidents, took the unusual position of publicly endorsing Clinton for president. Morell deplored that Trump was ignoring that Putin “has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin.”
We would expect to hear every prominent, patriotic Republican leader announcing their love of their country means they cannot — and will not — vote for Trump for president.
Instead, in the final days of Campaign 2016, America’s beyond-politics patriots remain tormented by the unrelenting sound of official Republican silence.Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Email him at <a href="mailto:martin.schram@gmail.com">martin.schram@gmail.com</a>.
Read or Share this story: <a href="http://www.vcstar.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/10/23/martin-schram-putin-gets-lucky-his-dirty-work/92466198/" rel="nofollow">http://www.vcstar.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/10/23/martin-schram-putin-gets-lucky-his-dirty-work/92466198/</a>

ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Something happened the day in 2012 when Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev passed on to President Vladimir Putin the notorious private message President Obama had asked him to convey — “Tell Vladimir I’ll be more flexible after the election.”
That is the exact moment, I believe, when Mr. Putin concluded 1) that the long-awaited opportunity to avenge the fall of the Soviet Union had arrived; 2) that the American president was weak; and 3) that if the American public elected such a man, they must be weak, too.Mr. Putin decided to destroy the West, using his KGB-trained hybrid warfare skills to infiltrate, divide and conquer. We saw it in Crimea. We have seen it in eastern Ukraine and Syria. We are seeing it in NATO, as Turkey and other Eastern European states are pulled towards Moscow’s sphere of influence. And yes, we are seeing it in the United States.
I have no doubt that Russian actors are behind the hacking of Democratic internal campaign emails. That is not the problem: We hack them as well. The problem is that Mr. Putin sees the cyber assault as an opening to destroy this country as we know it, driving a wedge between Americans.
I’m also sure the KGB was behind the placement of overwhelming numbers of Marxists in our educational system over the preceding decades. Moscow succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. Today, our universities are not halls of learning but really reeducation camps, preaching a long-dead ideology that even the Russians don’t value anymore. The dominance of the intellectual classes cracked open the door for Russia and others in exactly the way Vlad’s security service bosses imagined all those years ago. SEE ALSO: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton clash on policy, personality in final debate
It must be gratifying for the leadership in the Kremlin to see Mr. Obama actively assisting them in their mission. He has been the racial divider-in-chief. He shares the goals of the KGB back in the day — to change America as we know it.
Recently, we learned that Russia was behind the funding of many anti-fracking groups in the West, an obvious attempt to cripple the American economic engine that once defeated the Soviet Union. That strategy hasn’t worked out so well so far, as the Bakken fracking fields drove down the price of crude anyway. Still, the effort offers a revealing glimpse into how the Kremlin works.
I have no doubt that Mr. Putin is funding many fringe political groups in the U.S. and Europe, attempting to crack open the widening fissures of discontent against the liberal, immoral (as Russia sees it), progressive policies of the neo-Bolsheviks in our midst.All of this is happening as Russia floats the largest armada assembled since the end of the Cold War down the English Channel, as a refurbished Russian carrier operates close to NATO borders, and as Russian forces fight in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad against American-backed Sunni rebel groups.
This dividing and conquering is assisted by a well-funded Russian state media propaganda operation that now enjoys a global reach, spinning the Russian narrative better than Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama could ever do themselves. I think that is why the Left in the U.S. is so angry — Mr. Putin is beating them at their own game, a game they have been playing for years against the American conservative movement.
America is cracking right down the middle. My son, who is considering entering a service academy next fall, recently told me that he doesn’t want to go in the military if Mrs. Clinton is elected because he doesn’t want to kill other Americans. I thought that was a very prescient statement.Russia is fostering these divisions. Mr. Obama has enabled and nurtured them. As for Mr. Putin, he has a long-term goal in mind. He’s looking way down the line, towards the day when he steps down and Russia is once again a superpower, exporting food and hydrocarbons and deploying its military all over the world, working in conjunction with China to dominate a weak and divided West.
And it’s working.• L. Todd Wood is a former special operations helicopter pilot and Wall Street debt trader, and has contributed to Fox Business, The Moscow Times, National Review, the New York Post and many other publications. He can be reached through his website, <a href="http://LToddWood.com" rel="nofollow">LToddWood.com</a>.Please enable JavaScript to view the &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;comments powered by Disqus.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

As crises mount, relations between the US and Russia are worse than at any time since the cold warBoris Johnson’s suggestion that Britain, the US and other allies are re-examining “military options” in Syria has sharply focused minds on a phenomenon western politicians have spent the last 15 years trying not to think about: post-Soviet Russia’s determined drive to re-establish itself as a major global power and the willingness of its ruthless and tactically astute leader, Vladimir Putin, to employ almost any means, including use of force, to achieve that end.
The foreign secretary’s remarks were condemned by Moscow as an attempt to whip up anti-Russian “hysteria” and were swiftly disowned by a nervous Downing Street. Johnson’s call for demonstrations outside Russia’s London embassy invited similar, retaliatory action against British interests in Moscow. The gaffe underlined his inexperience and lack of judgment.Continue reading...

Defeating ISIS in Mosul will be in the interest of Sunni Arabs in general as much asit will be in the interests of Iran and Shia Arabs in Iraq. The primary victims of this terrorist group have been the Sunni peoples and governments. Eliminating ISIS has become an international imperative agreed upon by the East and the West. There is no difference over the need to achieve a decisive military victory against ISIS, rather, the task of overseeing this has been entrusted to the US in Iraq and Russia and Syria. All indications suggest the military battle for Mosul, even if it may last a while, will end with the liberation of the city from the group. Crushing ISIS in Iraq will then weaken it in neighboring Syria. The overlap of the Iraqi and Syrian battlefields will keep them linked, meaning that there will be no solution to Iraq's security without a similar solution in Syria and vice versa. Particularly so when major regional players such as Turkey and Iran are holding on closely to their cards in the two key Arab nations, while the Kurdish element present in both countries remains a major point of either contention, harmony, convergence, or competition for the players. The battle for Mosul may be settled militarily in weeks, but the presence of so many opposing agendas for the aftermath portends complications down the road and could end one insurgency only to start another. Therefore, warnings regarding the political conduct of the Iraqi government are linked to its performance on the battlefield, and the extent to which it would allow the Iran-backed, Shia-dominated Popular Mobilization Units to participate in the battle for Mosul and the possibility of using them to subdue the Sunnis in the largest Sunni city in Iraq.

In Syria's Aleppo, another major Sunni city meanwhile, there could be a pause in the bloodletting if the commitments made by the actors meeting in Lausanne last week, in talks that brought together the US, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran - expanded to include Iraq and Egypt at Tehran's request while excluding Britain and France at Russia's request. According to a source close to the negotiations, the claims by Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin regarding the approval by Turkey, Saudi, and Qatar of seeking to convince Syrian rebels to separate from the Nusra Front are accurate but not the full picture. Ambassador Churkin denied that there had been a Russian price paid in return for this. However, the source said the agreement reached was an expression of willingness by the Turkish-Saudi-Qatari trio to use their influence on the rebels to separate from the Nusra, in return for Russia working with the regime in Damascus to freeze operations in Aleppo, end systematic killing of civilians, and end sieges on rebel areas. The ministers agreed to continue their discussions and hold military meetings on the basis of the "two-way" agreement.

If you thought it couldn’t get worse than Edward Snowden, you’d be quite wrong. It just did.
It’s happened again. An employee at the National Security Agency, our largest and most powerful intelligence service, has gone off the rails, stealing documents on an unprecedented scale.
When the case of Harold Thomas Martin III, an NSA contractor, broke earlier this month, I explained that the fact the FBI caught him taking classified information home was a bad sign, since it’s often a tell that espionage may be involved. As I stated:

Let me say that, as a former NSA counterintelligence officer, people seldom take classified information home with them just once. There are only two reasons why anybody risks jail by illegally removing secrets from the office. Either you’re seeking to sell them to a foreign intelligence service, or you’re just a weirdo who does that sort of thing for fun.

Martin, who was arrested in late August, was not initially charged with espionage, rather with mishandling classified information, a far less serious crime. An overweight nerd, he gave the impression of being the sort of “weirdo” I described rather than a mole.
Now, however, it’s apparent that the theft of classified information perpetrated by Martin over many years was truly astonishing and unprecedented in scope. This week, Federal prosecutors used the word “breathtaking” to describe what Martin had done and indicated they intend to charge him with crimes under the Espionage Act.
Read the rest at The Observer…

With FBI help, Czech authorities nabbed a Russian wanted for hacking against Americans—is he tied to cyber-attacks on Democrats?
Kremlin cyberespionage against the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has become a prominent feature of this election year, particularly as we close in on November 8. The torrent of revelations exposed by Wikileaks with its stolen emails in recent weeks about the inner workings of Team Clinton has proved an embarrassment to the Democrats at the worst possible time.
This, of course, is no coincidence. It’s been obvious for years, to anyone acquainted with Russians and counterintelligence, that Wikileaks is a front for the Kremlin. In the past, Julian Assange and his self-styled “privacy organization” tried to obscure its true allegiance, but in 2016 that mask fell. In truth, there is no “Wikileaks,” which is no more than a fence for Western information stolen by Russian spies. What we call Wikileaks is really just the figurehead Assange, a few hangers-on, and the Kremlin’s powerful intelligence agencies.
The Russian hand behind Wikileaks is now so evident that our Intelligence Community recently took the unprecedented step of outing the group as a Kremlin pawn. For four years, Assange has waged Moscow’s online propaganda war against the West from the safety of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he’s been hiding from rape charges in Sweden, with impunity. That’s over now.
Western governments have had enough and are finally getting serious about Wikileaks and its Kremlin ties. This week the Ecuadorian foreign ministry cut off Assange’s internet access—his transparent efforts to meddle in an American presidential race and elect Donald Trump had become too much for his hosts to stomach. That the British bank accounts of RT (formerly Russia Today), Moscow’s government propaganda network, were frozen the same day Assange lost his wifi indicates that Western countries are now working together, fighting back in the SpyWar against Russia.
Read the rest at The Observer…

Vladimir Putin’s generals have taken Sun Tzu’s lessons to heart.

Last week, the New York Timesran a news story on inflatable jets and missile launchers being added to the Kremlin’s arsenal. Using balloons as weapons of war may sound strange and lead one to think Moscow has concocted a novel method of war. Upon deeper analysis, what the Russians are doing is nothing particularly new. The British and American military famously employed inflatable tanks in World War II in order to deceive the Germans. The Serbs more recently used decoys during the intervention in the Balkans to trick NATO bomber pilots. The method to this inflatable madness is based on well-established military thinking, going all the way back to ancient China. To get a better sense of what the Russians are doing and how they understand warfare, one only needs to pick up a copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.“Warfare is the Way (Tao) of deception. Thus although [you are] capable, display incapability to them. When committing to employ your forces, feign inactivity. When [your objective] is nearby, make it appear to be distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby.”Read full article

As Lawfare readers surely know by now, during Wednesday's third presidential debate there was this exchange (Transcript via New York Times):

CLINTON: ... that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.
So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 — 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.
WALLACE: Secretary Clinton...
CLINTON: And I think it’s time you take a stand...
TRUMP: She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China, or anybody else.
CLINTON: I am not quoting myself.
TRUMP: She has no idea.
CLINTON: I am quoting 17...
TRUMP: Hillary, you have no idea.
CLINTON: ... 17 intelligence — do you doubt 17 military and civilian...
TRUMP: And our country has no idea.
CLINTON: ... agencies.
TRUMP: Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt it.

Let’s take Trump at his word. Why, exactly, does he doubt that Russia is behind the recent election-related cyberattacks?
I posed a few questions on Twitter Thursday, exploring this question:

A few thoughts on Trump's debate position rejecting USIC assessment that Russia behind election-related cyber activities... #debate /1
Does he have actual info revealing why the USIC is wrong? #debate /2
Have his advisors told him there is a reason to be skeptical? Have reporters asked Gen. Flynn and others? #debate /3
Does he reject USIC assessments on other issues unrelated to Russia? Which ones? If not, why only Russia-related issues? #debate /4
Does he not believe the DNI because the DNI is an Obama Administration political appointee? #debate /5
Does he understand that the DNI-DHS assessment is the considered/consensus view of the USIC? #debate /6
Does he believe - as some might - that post WMD Iraq the USIC is simply unreliable? #debate /7
If he believes the USIC is unreliable or ineffective, does he plan to significantly reduce the USIC budget? #debate /8

To expand on these questions and points, briefly:
It seems unlikely that Trump actually has some specific information that contradicts what the Intelligence Community has stated publicly. If he did, there’s nothing about the manner in which he has conducted his campaign to suggest that he wouldn’t use that information to discredit U.S. government officials, particularly those that are appointees of the current administration.
So the more likely explanation for his rejection of the Intelligence Community’s assessment is one of two things: either he i) simply has an extreme inherent skepticism about any information that originates from the Intelligence Community; or, ii) he affirmatively chooses not to accept this particular assessment that Russia is behind the attacks, but he won’t explain to the public why he does not accept it.
It’s one or the other. And neither previews a presidency that would put America in a good place - let alone "first" - when it comes to national security. Instead, if he were to abandon intelligence collection, reject most or all intelligence assessments, or simply govern wholly based on his own experience and gut instincts, he would put America at risk.
A healthy skepticism of the intelligence assessments is a good trait in a policymaker. But willful ignorance is another thing.
Trump must be asked, and must be pressed to answer, whether he believes anything that originates from the Intelligence Community. The public deserves to know whether this is a man who is capable of receiving and processing information from professionals whose job it is to protect the country. Does he believe that the threats to the country are more or less in line with the annual threat assessment provided by the DNI to Congress and the public each year? Or, does he not believe that the DNI presents an accurate threat picture? Or, does he pick and choose among those assessments that are in line with his existing world view on certain topics?
If Trump accepts most of what the Intelligence Community reports except that which relates to Russia, then the questions regarding his motivations for a Russia-friendly foreign policy need further exploration. (Perhaps he simply admires Putin’s “strength.” Perhaps he aspires to reinvent the two-major-power global dominance. Or perhaps he knows pretty much he is going to lose this election, and desperately wants to preserve Trump Family Business market opportunities for building projects, infrastructure, hotels and consumer goods, beginning November 9.) If the only intelligence assessment he rejects is that which relates to Russia, then he has some explaining to do.
If, on the other hand, he does not believe or is highly skeptical of just about any Intelligence Community assessment, then one wonders just how exactly he plans to conduct his national security and foreign policy decision making. Perhaps he remembers watching on TV U.S. government assertions about WMD in Iraq, and he has internally vowed never to fall victim to bad intelligence. But if that's the reason for his disbelief, he has never revealed it. Nor does it indicate an awareness of how the community has changed and adapted in the years since. Nor has he revealed what additional reforms he might offer to prevent such errors in the future.
But if he can't reasonably pin his rejection of the recent cyber assessment on Iraq war history, what logical explanation is there? Is it possible that he is so naïve about how war fighting, counterterrorism, diplomacy and many, many other aspects related to national security, foreign policy, and even peace are conducted and achieved amongst first world nations that he is simply unaware of the role that intelligence plays?
The purpose of the Intelligence Community is to provide policy makers with intelligence that informs their military, national security and foreign affairs policies and decisions. The President is the Intelligence Community’s number one customer. Does Trump plan to forego his intelligence briefings? If he finds the Intelligence Community’s role of little use, does he plan to recommend that Congress drastically cut the Intelligence Community’s $50 billion budget? (Intelligence and homeland security industrial complex, are you paying attention?)
Trump may think that his refusal to accept the Intelligence Community’s assessment of the election-related cyberattacks is not particularly important. But, it is highly important. It’s a decision that speaks to whether he has any grasp about how world affairs work. It’s a decision that impacts how he would carry out his Commander in Chief responsibilities. It’s a decision that impacts how he would manage the Executive Branch and be a steward of taxpayer funds. It’s a decision that he needs to be pressed on, every day, from now until November 8.

After cyberattacks, Russian rivalry intensifiesThe Simmons Voice
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. said in an official statement regarding the ...and more »

Russia should join NATO: the benefits for the Global Security are enormous

To reformulate Lord Ismay's phrase: 1) Take Russia in, 2) Continue keeping Germany down, 3) Assert and exercise the US leadership position within the NATO as a unifying and directing force and vector.

"Ловец Человеков"

Connected? The halo is there. And the Book is there. And the disciples are there. But where is the Light of Understanding, in this big curved dark tunnel of a vision? Where is the big red dot? Where is the new beginning?

Russia and US Presidential Elections of 2016 - Google News

Russia international behavior - Google News

RUSSIA and THE WEST

russia ukraine - Google News

West, Russia, Putin

US - Russia relations - Google News

Hillary Clinton and rock group Pussy Riot

"Great to meet the strong & brave young women from #PussyRiot, who refuse to let their voices be silenced in #Russia. 1:09 PM - 4 Apr 2014" - Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton tweeted a picture Friday of her posing with members of the anti-Vladimir Putin punk rock group Pussy Riot. Clinton met with the women during the "Women in the World Summit" in New York. The group has emerged as chief opponents of Putin, and three members were jailed in 2012 after an anti-Putin performance at a church. The tweet has been re-tweeted almost 10,000 times.